If You Know How To Fuel and Train Your Body, Where You Are Matters Less.™

January 14, 2019January 12, 2019

Workout Edge: Ditch The Fitness Tracker. Here’s Why.

Well Happy New Year. After taking a break it’s good to be back writing.

I originally intended to write something different for this Workout Edge post…but decided to change things on the fly. This’ll be a bit different from the usual Workout Edge posts you’re used to, but a little change up never hurt anybody.

In less than 72 hours after the new year began, I was browsing the aisles of my local grocery store (I needed to buy milk and other staples).

Then I heard it. The slew of “new year, new you” fitness ads.

Sigh.

The day after I wound up having a conversation with some business associates – one of which had never heard of “tally marks”. Somehow the conversation spun into something along the lines of “why use tally marks when you can use a fitness tracker?,” with an annoyingly condescending intonation.

Exasperated, with a mild twitch in my eye, I shut down the conversation as tactfully and non-condescendingly as possible, witnessing yet another beautifully simple system being phased out with civilizations’ undying hunger for convenience.

Our solution, of making things more convenient, is inevitably becoming our downfall. . .the power of convenience has made man lazy – ironically taking away our power of self-reliance.

Which brings me to my point – ditch the fitness tracker.

Why?

It’s a very…civilian way to think and do things. If you’re active duty or have ever been in the military, you’ll know exactly what I’m getting at here.

Athleticism has been around since the beginning of mankind. The Romans excelled at it. Originally required for the very creation and advancement of civilization, it’s now somehow become a recreational hobby of some sort – a status symbol, for lack of a better expression.

Social media is plagued with gym-selfies and videos. There’s always that handful of people who are exerting the muscles in their fingers on their phones more than any other muscle on actual gym equipment while in said gym.

With mass commercialization sometimes it feels like it’s lost its edge, getting lost in vanity instead.

For me, like hunting or fishing, athleticism allows us to tap into our primal instincts – our survival skills – everything before the constructs of civilization were formed and the rule of “only the strong survive” prevailed, allowing evolution to take its course, cruel as it may have been sometimes.

It doesn’t require anything but your body, mental strength and an even stronger will.

…and it befuddles me when I see something so pure and raw being fused with completely unnecessary tech.

Fitness trackers, in my opinion, are just another way to make our brains lazy and ourselves self-reliant on the mass variety of tech that corporations pump out year after year. This may sound like I’m getting political but I assure you I am not.

There’s no fault in keeping track of your progress – on the contrary, I thoroughly encourage it. But in the name of all things holy, do it without all the bullshit.

Technology has its upsides in improving our progress, but it’s still good to learn and remember how to do things with the basics. Think about what you’d do if you didn’t have access to the tech. You already have a fitness tracker – it’s called your brain.

Sprinkle in some old school time-tested knowledge, a dash of common sense, and guess what – you’ve become fitter, smarter – and the only thing that does get a bit fatter is your wallet.

Fitness trackers are another way of keeping us plugged in and switched on – but working out is about the opposite – getting in touch with yourself, switching off from the day-to-day, and unplugging. Tech detoxing and maintaining self-reliance, in my opinion.

If you have time to stop and fiddle with a fitness tracker, your workouts aren’t that intense.

Learn to track your workouts yourself and keep the pressure off, minimize the anxiety tech already gives enough people today – no worrying about if your battery will die, stop-starting your workout to enter info, being interrupted by notifications, etc.

Get in touch with your body, listen to it, keep things simple and you’ll naturally fall into auto-regulation (something I’ll be expanding upon in-depth in my upcoming book).

Really want a fitness tracker? Buy a stopwatch – preferably Seiko. A notepad and pen. A swiss army knife.

Use the first one to track your runs, time your rest periods between sets, and more. Use the second one to track your reps and sets using the tally mark system. Use the third one if you so happen to be in the woods and don’t have the second one (that was a joke – but also an option).

Really want to monitor your heart rate? Use the 15 x 4 method (not the strength training method, which is different). For 15 seconds, count how many times your heart beats by measuring your pulse at your wrist or your neck. Multiply it by 4. That’s your current BPM. From there you can easily figure out what level of intensity you’re at. From there you’ll learn to pay attention to your body and feel the different intensities.

There’s other little things you learn along the way but the bottom line is, you don’t need another piece of rechargeable tech to do something that’s been done for what feels like eons.

SUPP UP. is all about stripping away the inessential, so you can cope in situations where accessibility and time is least. Learn to do that and you can focus on the stuff that matters – getting better at whatever aspect of your training it is that you choose to focus on.